Closed RP: Pippi and Lily and A Lot of Pancakes.

[pippithepirate.livejournal.com]

((Backdated to the Tuesday after this exchange of owls.))

Pippi was in a pretty good mood. Granted, she usually was. Except when she was sad, obviously, but she preferred to focus on good things right now... It was more fun anyway. One of these good things was an impending trip to Hogsmeade with Sirius and Lily, two of her favourite people (she had a lot of favourite people), and right now she was on her way to the kitchens to make pancakes with the latter. Special ones! Pippi had never made quite so special pancakes before, though Tommy and Annika had remarked several times on her... slightly peculiar ways of making this particular treat.

No, she was not going to think about Tommy and Annika. Otherwise she'd just end up missing them an awful lot, and that wouldn't do. Instead she focused on the stern talking-to she was giving the monkey on her shoulder as she walked. Well, walked and walked... She was mostly skipping, occasionally taking a huge pirate leap over a crack in the floor, but she managed to keep a monologue up anyway.

"Now, Mr. Nilsson, you have to be very polite and not steal any of the pancakes. Remember how we talked about this before? I know you're useless at being proper, but you have to try this time. There'll be monkey pancakes for you, if you behave."

Mr. Nilsson made an affirmative - or at least that was how Pippi chose to interpret it - sound and tilted his head. The girl nodded, pleased.

She knew the way to the kitchens, having been there before making biscuits, and knew exactly how to get in. She tickled the pear, it giggled, and she poked her redhaired head in through the opening, a wide, dimpled grin spreading over her freckly face.

"Hello in the kitchens!" she called out in a loud voice.

Comments

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

"Hello back!" Lily responded with a laugh. She was wearing an apron (http://laylagrayce.com/detail.aspx?ID=5538) and arranging ingredients in a line. She'd been down in the kitchens for a while, shooing away house-elves and getting everything in order.

Though she'd probably never admit it, Lily had been looking forward to this with a keen anticipation ever since she and Pippi had made the plans. She'd never gotten to do the silly mum stuff with Harry - teaching him to make cookies or letting him lick the spoon or showing him how to stir batter. Never had flour fights or told him how her grandmum had come from Ireland and made the best lamb stew and used to let Lily help her chop the vegetables. There was none of the bonding that Lily remembered so vividly from her own kitchen growing up, none of the moments that connected current generations with those past. Food wasn't just a means of nourishment; it was something that brought people together, that was a physical expression of love and caring and protection.

Grinning widely at Pippi, Lily handed the girl her own apron (http://laylagrayce.com/detail.aspx?ID=4090). "So we look professional," she told the girl, gravely, eyes dancing. "And here's one for Mr. Nilsson, as well." The monkey got an appropriately yellow apron, of the perfect size for him to wear.

"Now, are you ready to make pancakes?"

[pippithepirate.livejournal.com]

Pippi had never cooked with anybody before. The closest thing she'd gotten to it was making sandwiches with Tommy and Annika before they went on one of their many adventures, and that could hardly count... Being on a pirate ship with one's father didn't give you many opportunities to cook with people. She'd been too busy pirating. Burying treasure and whatnot.

She had never, not once in her life, ever used an apron when making pancakes. When making anything. Because she hadn't had adult supervision before, and had never been told it was something you had.

So she looked at the offered apron, and then accepted it, blinking once. "Well, that's important," she said equally as gravely. Then she perked up. An apron for Mr. Nilsson? That was more like it! He usually got little outfits, most often things that Pippi had tailored herself, but he had never had an apron before.

"Thanks," she said, not quite able to keep the surprise from her voice, and then put Mr. Nilsson down at the back of a nearby chair, so that he wouldn't be in the way. It took her about ten seconds to put on his apron. The monkey was used to wearing clothes by now, and didn't protest. "There. Fits him perfectly," said Pippi with satisfaction and grinned at Lily.

She put on her own apron. It had pockets. That was very practical. Pippi put her hands in them, balanced on her heels and leaned back a bit, admiring how she looked. Cherries? Cherries were nice. Went well with her hair.

"Yep!" she said as a reply to Lily's question and took her hands out of the pockets to eagerly rub her palms together. "But only if we make a ridiculous amount of them. I'm hungry."

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

Laughing softly, Lily eyed the counter fairly bowing under the weight of all the ingredients. "I think we can manage a ridiculous amount," she agreed with a grin, pulling her hair back from her face and into a messy bun. "Probably not obscene, though - that's a bit of a stretch - but we'll definitely pass silly and go straight into ridiculous. And Sirius will appreciate that. Bloke has an endless appetite." Lily shook her head sadly, lips twitching up. "Sad, really. He eats and eats and is never full. But we'll do our best to feed you both, yeah?"

Pulling out two huge mixing bowls and wooden spoons, Lily then slid over a stool for Pippi to sit on, so the girl could easily reach the counter. Eyeing Mr. Nilsson, she nodded. "He looks quite dashing. And you, my dear, look lovely." Lily winked at Pippi and grabbed the flour. "Like a chief in the making."

She began to measure flour into her own bowl. "This is a recipe (http://allaboutirish.com/library/recipes/rec-irishpancake.shtm) my grandmum used to make. My dad taught me - he would get up early every Sunday and make us huge feasts. Eggs and bangers and fluffy biscuits and loads of pancakes with syrup." Handing Pippi the measuring cup and container of flour, Lily asked, sounding just a little shy, "Do you want me to teach you how to make them?" Busying herself with finding the baking soda, Lily pretended she wasn't transferring all of those frustrated mothering instincts into showing Pippi her family's pancake recipe. That she didn't let some tiny little piece of her pretend that the flash of red hair she caught out of the corner of her eye was not a random little girl but her own.

Right.

[pippithepirate.livejournal.com]

"I'm a pirate chief," said Pippi, because she wouldn't have it any other way, thank you very much. At heart, she was a pirate in everything she did. Even if it was only making pancakes. She climbed up on the stool and dangled her legs. "I knew a man who could eat a hundred pancakes in one sitting, and he still wasn't full," she said conversationally. "He lived in South America. Boy, was he fat! He asked my Papa if he could have our main sail to make a jumper for himself, but we needed that ourselves. Finally we gave him some curtains to make a belt out of." She was, of course, lying through her teeth. Such a man did not exist. But maybe, in the moment she told the story, she believed that he did.

Hm. Maybe there was a small piece of Pippi that wished she could have had a father like Lily's... Not to say she didn't love Captain Efraim Longstocking, because she fiercely did, with all her heart, but occasionally, when she met Tommy and Annika's dad, she wondered how her life would have been if her mother hadn't died. Maybe they would have been a family. Maybe her Mama would have taught her how to make pancakes. As it were, Pippi had sort of... taught herself. She'd had to teach herself a lot of things,

"If you want," said Pippi and took the offered items. She put the flour down too abruptly, and some of it went up into her face. The girl shook her head quickly, blinking owlishly in surprise before her eyes crossed and she sneezed loudly. Luckily she managed to turn her head away from the rest of the flour before she did, or the kitchen would definitely have been coated with a thin layer of white powder in the next second.

Once she had regained control of herself she shook her head again. Some flour had nestled into her hair, but otherwise she was clean. "Oops," she said, just a little amused. "I wasn't prepared for that. Okay. I'm ready to learn now, and I won't sneeze anymore. And then I'll teach you how to flip the pancakes. Does that sound like a fair deal?" She peered curiously at Lily and grabbed the measuring cup again, ready to learn. Which was something quite unusual for Pippi... Most often she wasn't very keen on learning things. The teacher at Tommy and Annika's school had learned that the hard way.

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

"Never met a pirate chef," Lily commented, measuring out the baking soda. "I would think that it'd be hard to make things on a boat. Don't you rock back and forth horribly?" Lily had actually never been in a boat before. But she imagined that the bit of pirate fantasy was simply the product of an overactive imagination. Nothing wrong with that - Lily had spent many a happy hour when she was younger pretending that the tree in her front yard was a tower and the empty wrapping paper tube was a sword to slay dragons.

Measuring out all the dry ingredients, Lily listened, enraptured, to Pippi's story. "One of my mates was named Hagrid. Huge bloke, half-giant - could pick me up as easy as I could you - massive appetite." She laughed, "I always knew I was in for it when I invited him over for dinner. But he was was - he is one of the sweetest men I've ever met. Loyal to a fault," she flashed a grin at Pippi, "kind of like Sirius, actually." Again, she half-expected that Pippi's story was mostly made up. However (ironically and completely wrong), she figured the chance of Pippi running into a giant - or even a half giant - was far better than the girl cooking for pirates.

Laughing gently at Pippi's run in with the flour, Lily reached out to sweep her hand lightly across the girl's hair, dislodging the worse of it. "That's why I wear aprons," she told Pippi with a grin. "I'm clumsy; most of what I'm making usually ends up on me rather than in the bowls."

Pleased, Lily handed Pippi the already measured portions of the dry ingredients. "That sounds perfect. Now, if you promise to keep mum about it, I'll let you in on the Evans family secret for making pancakes." Leaning forward, eyes dancing, Lily lowered her voice. "We add just a dash of coconut extract. Makes the pancakes extra fluffy and gives it just a little something extra."

[pippithepirate.livejournal.com]

"Only when there's a storm," said Pippi and shrugged. "But then we rock an awful lot. And there's a lot of wind. Enough to blow a man overboard." She paused and added matter-of-factly, "That's what happened to my Papa, you know. The wind picked him up and blew him into the water." It was said as if it was nothing. It was nothing. She hadn't lost her father, he was just... misplaced for the moment. Any day now he'd come back, this Pippi knew with absolute certainty. So it was nothing. Her father blowing overboard was really just an amusing anecdote, because he had floated ashore on his big fat belly and was now king on a faraway, tropical island. Yeah.

Pippi looked down into the container of the dry ingredients, wrinkling her nose curiously. It was a little bit different from the way she made pancakes... Pippi's was more slap-dash, more 'let's have as much of every ingredient as possible and see what happens' and it usually worked out fine. Following a recipe was not really her thing. Therefore she watched Lily with interest. "Hagrid sounds nice," she commented. "He sounds like my Papa. He's not half giant, but he could pick you up real easily too. He's very strong, just like me. Is Hagrid here at the school now?"

She peered up at Lily, grinning. "I need an apron for my face. I'd had to cut out holes through it for my eyes, though... I'd look like a ghost." Which was quite fine with Pippi, actually. "A ghost with cheeries in the face," she added thoughtfully and pondered just how weird that would look. A ghost with cherry tattoos in the face, or maybe rashes that looked like cherries...

"I'll keep mum," she promised solemnly, blue eyes shining back at Lily. "I'm very good at keeping mum. No one is as brilliant as me at keeping mum. Especially when there are secrets involved." As Pippi had no family secrets of her own, she was happy to cherish one of Lily's. "It sounds good," she said diplomatically. "We'll have some of that, so that Sirius can have fluffy pancakes."

She reached for an egg and gave it a twirl so that it spun around the table surface. It was a fun game, so Pippi did it again, eying the egg intently and wondering how long it would take before it fell off the table and smashed against the floor.